Chancellor Rachel Reeves speech at the Scientific Superpower Conference
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has today (3 June) delivered a speech at the Scientific Superpower Conference.
Thank you. And thank you to the Supercluster Board especially for everything that has gone into today and over the last year and a half.
It’s great to be able to be here to speak to you this afternoon.
I look around this room, and just meeting people as I came in, I see people who have spent years — indeed in some cases decades — building something genuinely world-class and world building. Researchers, founders, investors, institution builders.
You already, together, have built the foundations through your own ambition and through the delivery that we’ve seen today.
Our role as government is to build on that, not tell you what to do— but to actually matching your pace, back your ambition, and helping it scale.
Eighteen months ago, on the outskirts of Oxford I committed to delivering sustainable, long-term growth in the Oxford to Cambridge Growth Corridor.
Earlier this year, back in March I set out in my Mais lecture how AI and innovation and regional growth as two of my three big choices for secure economic growth for our country
To go for growth not in just a few parts of Britain, but as you’ve heard in the previous session with Steve and with Tom, to give Britain’s regions the chance to push ahead
Science and innovation really sit at the heart of this strategy.
By supporting cutting-edge research, and removing barriers so that ideas can really shine, we can create growth that builds on itself, that translate into jobs, investment and national prosperity.
For each part of Britain to be able to carve out its own niche in industries crucial to the UK’s prosperity and also our economic and national security,
drawing on the skills of our workforce, our existing industrial strengths, and the natural assets on which they are built.
I recognised that in the past, governments have been criticised for focusing on political and not economic geography.
I am clear that in our modern economy – the impact of regional investment will be most powerfully felt if we focus on dense, interconnected city regions.
That is why at the centre of our plans are two critical regional growth corridors.
The Oxford to Cambridge Growth Corridor and the Northern Growth Corridor.
These corridors share something in common and they share strong fundamentals
They have world-leading universities, innovative firms, and real commercial momentum behind them
and they also play different and complementary roles in our growth plan.
In the Northern Growth Corridor, there is huge scale but there is untapped productivity and so as a government we are backing places to realise their full potential — catalysing new opportunities, supporting regeneration, and making projects viable that can power growth for decades to come.
In the Oxford to Cambridge Growth Corridor, our task is to remove the constraints that are holding back growth, that could be unlocked now — unlocking infrastructure, housing and investment so that world - leading innovation can scale and then stay in the corridor.
The Oxford to Cambridge Growth Corridor is one of the clearest examples of how two of our innovation and regional hubs can work together – two of my big choices from my Mais lecture – come together in AI and in regional focus to deliver positive results.
Let me talk about some of those already.
Over 400 university spin-outs from Oxford and Cambridge between 2011 and 2025 — the highest of any academic institutions in the UK.
Cambridge now ranked first in Europe in the Global Innovation Index this year, second globally. Oxford is second in Europe, fifth globally.
The corridor is ranked second in the world for mean start-up deal size among global tech clusters.
That position is the product of decades of sustained investment, world-class institutions, and founders who chose to build here, building on those foundations.
And look at what that has produced.
Arm — born in Cambridge, now building the architecture underpinning the global AI revolution.
Oxford Nanopore, transforming genomics through AI-enabled sequencing.
CMR Surgical, building the next generation of robotic surgery from Evolution Business Park in Cambridge and with a global manufacturing hub in Ely.
And businesses like Aiimi in Milton Keynes — AI-native, scaling fast — a reminder that this corridor’s technology base runs deeper and wider than any one city or any one town.
These are some of the best companies that the UK has to offer.
And global investors are taking note.
AstraZeneca has just recommitted £300 million to its UK operations, including £200 million at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
The Ellison Institute of Technology is establishing a major new global science campus here, part of a £10 billion UK investment.
This morning, I met with investors from across the world who are looking at this corridor as their front door into UK creativity and innovation.
We want capital to start here, we also want it to scale here — and to stay here. Those have been two areas, the scaling and the staying, where we have struggled.
I recognise that progress hasn’t always felt as fast as it needs to be.
That infrastructure hasn’t always kept up.
That planning has often taken far too long.
And that housing constraints remain a challenge
And I recognise that we need to continue turning ambition into delivery.
The Oxford–Cambridge corridor has £143 billion in regional Gross Value Added.
Thirty percent of jobs in this corridor are in knowledge-intensive sectors — nearly triple the national average.
Employment growth is running forty percent faster than the rest of the country.
This is not a place that needs government to tell it what it’s capable of.
Instead it needs a government to work in partnership with businesses, to deliver public investment, drive private investment, and make conscious and deliberate choices that help clear the path to delivery.
So let me tell you some of the things that we are doing.
First, as you heard from Matt Pennycook earlier, we are establishing a Development Corporation for Greater Cambridge.
a delivery vehicle — with the powers, the governance and the mandate to unlock strategic sites and to accelerate growth.
Cambridge has been waiting for this. The time for waiting is now over.
Second, I am announcing a major land acquisition by Homes England – buying the airfield in Cambridge East in partnership with Hill Group — that will allow us to align land, funding and planning levers and bring forward a key Cambridge growth site faster than the status quo would ever have managed.
Third, we’re announcing funding to support a new Eastern entrance at Bletchley train station to maximise the opportunities of East-West Rail.
The Growth Mission Fund will deliver improved connectivity with the town and better door-to-door connectivity for passengers and rail users.
We know that growth can’t happen without the right infrastructure being in place.
Growth needs to work for the communities it serves as well as for investors.
These are concrete steps. Not commitments to act. But action.
Innovation ecosystems are built over decades and I understand that.
The research pipelines, the talent networks, the trust between institutions — none of that happens quickly, and none of it should be rushed.
But, in today’s world, we cannot afford to move at yesterday’s pace.
The countries and the clusters we are competing with are not waiting. They are investing, they are building, and they are moving. And so must we.
So where government can go faster — we absolutely will.
Two weeks ago, we announced that we are developing an accelerated package of reforms to build critical energy infrastructure faster.
This supports energy security and growth by reducing avoidable delay and uncertainty in the infrastructure sector.
We’ve also announced Compulsory Purchase Order reform, which is about unlocking stalled sites and turning plans into progress — faster, more certain, and at real scale.
We want to work with landowners where we can, but where people are holding our country back, this government is not afraid to use these powers to ensure our growth, and we will make sure authorities that want to use these powers have the guidance that they need to do so.
I welcome the vision the Supercluster Board has set out today.
The ambition to make this region a top-ten global innovation cluster is exactly the level of ambition that our country needs.
It is the focus and confidence that we need too.
Because in many of the metrics that matter — we already lead.
We have the talent. We have the investment andWe have the drive.
We are punching above our weight.
And now we want the scale.
So this is a stretching target — but it is one we are right to aim for.
And this is truly a joint endeavour — between business, investors, universities and the government.
Each of us has a distinct role.
Each of us has to deliver.
And each of us also, will be held to account for whether we do or we do not.
Government is determined to be an enabler of this success — backing the conditions for growth and helping to remove the barriers that hold it back.
In the weeks ahead, I will set out more on how we can support firms to start, scale and stay in the UK.
And, this corridor will be central to that work — not as a special case, but as a demonstration of what is possible when all the pieces come together.
The numbers here are extraordinary. The talent is extraordinary. And, the ambition in this room is extraordinary.
If we get this right — working together — this corridor will not just compete globally.
It will lead globally.
We can do that together,
Thank you very much.